Unsired Bond
by S. A. Arkenburgh
Summary: Damon leaves to control the bond and to keep Elena safe, but Klaus and Stefan find the cure, change Elena back, and call Damon back to make sure the bond is gone with her vampirism...


I** know it's been months since I've written anything worth posting yet, but I've been working on the sequel to Binding Crime, and I don't want to post it yet because I'm in a rough patch of writer's block and posting just the first couple chapters is a tease I couldn't bear, and it wouldn't be fair to any of you.**

**So, I'll just write a quick one-shot for those hungry for my writing expertise that comes from my neurotic, scatter-brained mind. :P That was literary sarcasm—I'm not a better writer than everyone else. **

**Anyhow, 4x08 "We'll Always Have Bourbon Street" was my favorite Delena episode of all time because I saw Damon's genuine happy face, which is a first without sarcasm. I love Stelena, but I think my favorite episode of them was in season one when Stefan was less broody and Elena was less depressed about every problem in her life, but now things are looking up… kind of. Damon is great for her as a vamp and Stefan was great for her while she was human. Anyhow, that's my take on it, and so I'll get on with it….Much Love!**

"_Elena, you'd make me very happy if you never spoke or thought of me again," he said. "Have a great life with anyone but me. I don't love or want you anymore."_

_His heart broke as he left her there crying into the rug. _

A stake to the heart or being soaked and starved in vervain would've felt like laying on a bed of roses compared to the heartache and pain he had now. It hurt worse knowing that he'd hurt Elena rather than just himself. Self-inflicted pain was tolerable, but hurting Elena—the love of his existence—was unbearable. He'd broken his promise and lied. He'd never just loved Elena—he needed her.

That memory of leaving her was the darkest, and always replayed when he slept, which went from every few days to weeks. He'd rather go forever without sleeping like the vampires do in every other modern-day supernatural movie or show. No matter where he went—New York, California, Canada, Nova Scotia, Italy, France, Spain, Iceland, Africa, _Antarctica_—the memory of Elena haunted him.

No matter how many women he'd had to distract him, he'd always found a similar characteristic of Elena in them, even if the only similarity was the fact that these women had a face. This woman had a face, and Elena had a face, so this girl has a similarity to Elena.

With hundreds of victims and nothing to show for it, Damon killed out of rage and anger, despair and heartache, and sadness. He was never happy again despite the large quantities of alcohol consumed to create a false sense of contentment.

Somehow, after three years of doing nothing yet everything at the same time, Damon landed himself back in Mystic Falls.

"I swear this town could be wiped off the face of the earth and I'd still find it," he mumbled angrily to himself.

His location was the Grill. It hadn't changed, and so he sat at the same stool at the bar and ordered the same brand of whiskey. Surprisingly, Matt was the one to serve it.

"What are you doing here?" he asked sans a smile. Nobody liked Damon, and Matt wasn't an exception to that fact.

"Meeting Stefan," he said as he swirled the drink in the glass. "So, you're finally old enough to be serving this stuff, huh?"

"Yeah, and you're still young enough to be drinking it, apparently," he snapped back.

"Forever twenty-four, Matthew," he said as he looked at the bar counter and took a drink.

As if on cue, Stefan strolled up and took a seat beside him, "Nice to see you again, brother."

"I wish I could say the same," Damon said as he finished his glass and ordered another one.

"I'd like one, too, Matt," Stefan said.

"You're still too young," Damon sneered. "Seventeen, remember?"

"I'm twenty-one in this town now," Stefan replied. "Drinking in public is permitted for me."

Matt gave the two their drinks and left to tend to the other customers.

"Let's skip the hellos and just get down to why you called me back to this forsaken town, shall we?" Damon asked.

"Klaus and I found the cure, Damon."

His eyes popped, "How?"

"I can't go into detail," Stefan started, "but Elena is in the transition to becoming human again as we speak. She's sleeping right now, but she's going to wake up soon, and I wanted to test something."

"You want to see if the sire bond is still there," Damon said, already knowing.

Stefan nodded.

"What the Hell?" Damon threw his hands up in exasperation. "I mean, I've put myself through years of torture. What's one more metaphorical stake to the heart? Is she at the boardinghouse?"

"Yes."

Damon got off the barstool and left Matt a nice tip despite the fact that they hated each other. Without another word, he hopped into his car and sped to his old home.

The pain set in on him as soon as he stepped through the threshold and saw that nothing had changed there, either. The same rug he left Elena crying on was still lying there like the incident took place yesterday. He continued his tour, and his room that he and Elena made love on was still the same. It was seemingly the only place and time he was ever genuinely happy as a vampire—that time with Elena.

He ran upstairs and down the hall to where Stefan was, but couldn't step through the doorway. It wasn't that he wasn't invited in, but because he could hear a human heartbeat that was all-too-familiar, and that he may just fall to pieces.

Surprisingly, Bonnie came out to see him. Her face was masked with this unknown darkness that wasn't like her, but it wasn't hatred. It was like her magic was darker.

"It worked, and that bond is no longer there," she said to him. "I checked for it."

After a minute of regaining scruples, Damon was just able to step into the room and see Elena lying in the bed, coming out of her REM state, and waking up.

"Elena," Stefan said as he ran his hands through her hair. Her brown eyes looked over at him with confusion.

"I feel blind," she said, "and I can barely hear."

Her voice hadn't changed, and she was the Elena he knew—the Elena he loved.

"You're human again, sweetheart," he said.

"What?" she screamed in a high voice as she shot straight up. "No!"

"What do you mean 'no'?" Stefan asked. "Elena, you're fixed."

"I wasn't broken, Stefan!" she yelled at him. "I was changed! You change me back just when I'm enjoying being a vampire—the freedom, the agility, and the lack of lethargy. I was finally happy! Now I'm tied down, slow, blind, deaf, and tired! Why did you do this to me?"

"Elena, I thought this was what you wanted." Stefan replied.

"You mean what _you_ wanted?" she yelled. "Changing me back hasn't changed my feelings, Stefan. I stopped reaching for something that wasn't there long ago. We were done the moment I was turned because I was able to see that you were trying to fix me when I wasn't broken."

"No," he said calmly. "We broke up when you could no longer fight the fact that you had feelings for my brother."

"Well, it doesn't matter now because he's gone," she mumbled to him.

Damon stepped out from the corner so that she could see him. His undead heart raced, and he could practically feel the anger radiating from her. She was happy as a vampire? There was so much he'd missed.

Her eyes caught his and her breath caught in her throat, "Damon."

The way she said his name made him fall to his knees beside the bed, "Elena."

Stefan, who had a call from Klaus and had run out of the house due to anger, was now gone.

"I'm talking to you," she smirked. "That must mean the bond is broken."

"No," he whispered, "just the sire part."

She smiled, "I've missed you."

"I've missed you more," he admitted. "Elena, what I did is unforgivable. I broke my promise to you, and I hurt you, and I'm so sorry."

"Shh," she put her index finger vertically to his lips. "I know why you did it, but you must believe that my feelings haven't changed. Damon, I wasn't lying when I said I loved you."

His deep blue eyes were clouded with emotions of joy and relief, "I love you, too."

"Change me back, please," she begged. "I'll follow you anywhere out of love—not a bond. Just change me."

"I'd find it hard to kill you."

"You could always give me a heart attack," she smirked. "You know, like you would've that night had I been human. We'd have forever, Damon."

He smiled, "Forever."

She got her wish, and they couldn't have been happier.

Forever...

**P.S. I have a community called TVD One Shot Worth-Its. Check it out and subscribe sometime. : ) This story was written at 1am because I was bored out of my mind. As a sixteen-year-old writer getting her first book published, writing just one story to finish it in time is stressful, and I needed to step away from it before I killed my main characters. Thus, I wrote this. It's by far not as good as any of my other works, and it's very rushed, but hey, I wrote it at 1am. **


End file.
